1 July 2018 – One doesn’t build alone. I like to put forward my work into the public domain and I appreciate hearing what people think of it. The dwellings at Churchillpark were open to the public and friends of my office. Afterwards, in the canteen FC Boshuizen, the urbanist Arie Lengkeek gave away a comic stand-up review. At least, that was the idea. Except funny and to the point, his talk was well prepared. He pleaded for an Architecture for Pigs. After all, it was Sir Winston Churchill himself who said: ‘I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.’ According to Arie, architecture has to do the same: to look the city’s inhabitant right into the face.

It was a nice introduction to Karin Templin’s account of the book she wrote about my work. The title ‘Street Architecture’ intends to say something similar. But how do you arrive at an architecture of the street? According to Karin, one learns that form very old cities such as Florence. Great architects of the Renaissance already posed the question how to make an understandable architecture for the city.

Many acquaintances joined the event. At the photo are Marjolein van Eig (ex-student and co-designer of the Bluecoat in Liverpool), Karin Templin, Paul Vermeulen (a Flemish colleague whom i admire ever after his 1996 exhibition in De Singel pand who will hopefully will accept a professorship in the Netherlands at some point) and Michel Zaan (ex-colleague, always quiet, Das Bauerkabinet in Flanders) who all have contributed to my work.

Pigs…

 

(foto: Jan Paul Mioulet / DAPh)

Met dank aan Den Daas Baksteen. Please also look at Architectenweb.